Абрахам Меррит - Burn, Witch, Burn!

"Will you be at home between six and nine, Dr. Lowell?" There was suppressed eagerness in his voice.

"Certainly, if it is important," I answered, after consulting my appointment book. "Have you found out

anything, Ricori?"

He hesitated.

"I do not know. I think perhaps-yes."

"You mean," I did not even try to hide my own eagerness. "You mean-the hypothetical place we

discussed?"

"Perhaps. I will know later. I go now, to where it may be."

"Tell me this, Ricori-what do you expect to find?"

"Dolls!" he answered.

And as though to avoid further questions he hung up before I could speak.

Dolls!

I sat thinking. Walters had bought a doll. And in that same unknown place where she had bought it, she

had sustained the injury which had so worried her-or rather, whose unorthodox behavior had so

worried her. Nor was there doubt in my mind, after hearing Robbins' story, that it was to that injury she

had attributed her seizure, and had tried to tell us so. We had not been mistaken in our interpretation of

that first desperate effort of will I have described. She might, of course, have been in error. The scald or,

rather, the salve had had nothing whatever to do with her condition. Yet Walters had been strongly

interested in a child. Children were the common interest of all who had died as she had. And certainly the

one great common interest of children is dolls. What was it that Ricori had discovered?

I called Braile, but could not get him. I called up Robbins and told her to bring the doll to me

immediately, which she did.

The doll was a peculiarly beautiful thing. It had been cut from wood, then covered with gesso. It was

curiously life-like. A baby doll, with an elfin little face. Its dress was exquisitely embroidered, a folk-dress

of some country I could not place. It was, I thought, almost a museum piece, and one whose price Nurse

Walters could hardly have afforded. It bore no mark by which either maker or seller could be identified.

After I had examined it minutely, I laid it away in a drawer. I waited impatiently to hear from Ricori.

At seven o'clock there was a sustained, peremptory ringing of the doorbell. Opening my study door, I

heard McCann's voice in the hall, and called to him to come up. At first glance I knew something was

very wrong. His tight-mouthed tanned face was a sallow yellow, his eyes held a dazed look. He spoke

from stiff lips:

"Come down to the car. I think the boss is dead."

"Dead!" I exclaimed, and was down the stairs and out beside the car in a breath. The chauffeur was

standing beside the door. He opened it, and I saw Ricori huddled in a corner of the rear seat. I could feel

no pulse, and when I raised the lids of his eyes they stared at me sightlessly. Yet he was not cold.

"Bring him in," I ordered.

McCann and the chauffeur carried him into the house and placed him on the examination table in my

office. I bared his breast and applied the stethoscope. I could detect no sign of the heart functioning. Nor

was there, apparently, any respiration. I made a few other rapid tests. To all appearances, Ricori was

quite dead. And yet I was not satisfied. I did the things customary in doubtful cases, but without result.

McCann and the chauffeur had been standing close beside me. They read my verdict in my face. I saw a

strange glance pass between them; and obviously each of them had a touch of panic, the chauffeur more

markedly than McCann. The latter asked in a level, monotonous voice:

"Could it have been poison?"

"Yes, it could-" I stopped.

Poison! And that mysterious errand about which he had telephoned me! And the possibility of poison in

the other cases! But this death-and again I felt the doubt-had not been like those others.

"McCann," I said, "when and where did you first notice anything wrong?"

He answered, still in that monotonous voice:

"About six blocks down the street. The boss was sitting close to me. All at once he says 'Jesu!' Like he's

scared. He shoves his hands up to his chest. He gives a kind of groan an' stiffens out. I says to him:

'What's the matter, boss, you got a pain?' He don't answer me, an' then he sort of falls against me an' I

see his eyes is wide open. He looks dead to me. So I yelps to Paul to stop the car and we both look him

over. Then we beat it here like hell."

I went to a cabinet and poured them stiff drinks of brandy. They needed it. I threw a sheet over Ricori.

"Sit down," I said, "and you, McCann, tell me exactly what occurred from the time you started out with

Mr. Ricori to wherever it was he went. Don't skip a single detail."

He said:

"About two o'clock the boss goes to Mollie's-that's Peters' sister-stays an hour, comes out, goes home

and tells Paul to be back at four-thirty. But he's doing a lot of 'phoning so we don't start till five. He tells

Paul where he wants to go, a place over in a little street down off Battery Park. He says to Paul not to go

through the street, just park the car over by the Battery. And he says to me, 'McCann, I'm going in this

place myself. I don't want 'em to know I ain't by myself.' He says, 'I got reasons. You hang around an'

look in now an' then, but don't come in unless I call you.' I says, 'Boss, do you think it's wise?' An' he

says, 'I know what I'm doing an' you do what I tell you.' So there ain't any argument to that.

"We get down to this place an' Paul does like he's told, an' the boss walks up the street an' he stops at a

little joint that's got a lot of dolls in the window. I looks in the place as I go past. There ain't much light

but I see a lot of other dolls inside an' a thin gal at a counter. She looks white as a fish's belly to me, an'

after the boss has stood at the window a minute or two he goes in, an' I go by slow to look at the gal

again because she sure looks whiter than I ever saw a gal look who's on her two feet. The boss is talkin'

to the gal who's showing him some dolls. The next time I go by there's a woman in the place. She's so

big, I stand at the window a minute to look at her because I never seen anybody that looks like her.

She's got a brown face an' it looks sort of like a horse, an' a little mustache an' moles, an' she's as funny a

looking brand as the fish-white gal. Big an' fat. But I get a peep at her eyes-Geeze, what eyes! Big an'

black an' bright, an' somehow I don't like them any more than the rest of her. The next time I go by, the

boss is over in a corner with the big dame. He's got a wad of bills in his hand and I see the gal watching

sort of frightened like. The next time I do my beat, I don't see either the boss or the woman.

"So I stand looking through the window because I don't like the boss out of my sight in this joint. An' the

next thing I see is the boss coming out of a door at the back of the shop. He's madder than hell an'

carrying something an' the woman is behind him an' her eyes spitting fire. The boss is jabbering but I can't

hear what he's saying, an' the dame is jabbering too an' making funny passes at him. Funny passes? Why,

funny motions with her hands. But the boss heads for the door an' when he gets to it I see him stick what

he's carrying inside his overcoat an' button it up round it.

"It's a doll. I see its legs dangling down before he gets it under his coat. A big one, too, for it makes quite

a bulge-"

He paused, began mechanically to roll a cigarette, than glanced at the covered body and threw the

cigarette away. He went on:

"I never see the boss so mad before. He's muttering to himself in Italian an' saying something over an'